


Enough

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Post-Season/Series 10 Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4378040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the quiet that follows, Sam starts the long, slow process of rebuilding his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [propinquitous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/propinquitous/gifts).



> Please check out the tender, heartbreaking art by [femmechester](http://femmechester.tumblr.com/) that inspired this: [here](http://femmechester.tumblr.com/post/119165801667/) and [here](http://femmechester.tumblr.com/post/118969749547/).

There are multiple universes, Cas would explain, if you asked him. There are different timelines created by people’s decisions, the possibilities branching off into an endless web of realities.

For instance, there’s a reality in which Dean and Sam choose each other over life itself, where Sam puts his trust in witches and demons and Dean turns Death’s blade against him and the whole world suffers as a result.

But there’s another reality where Rowena cuts the spell short before it finishes. A reality where, faced with the weight of all he and his brother have done to and for each other, with Dean asking for the sort of agency Sam himself has so often been denied, Sam makes a promise. In that reality, he swears that the second he breaks it, Death can come for him and he won’t put up a fight.

In that universe, when Dean goes, Sam lets him.

\--

Sam finds Cas leaning over Crowley, blade in hand.

When Cas looks up, Sam sees that there’s blood in his eyes, dripping down his face. He inhales sharply. When Cas makes an inhuman noise and lunges at him, he is already reaching for his knife.

For the few seconds they scuffle, Sam is sure he’s lost two people he loves in the space of a single day.

When his blade grazes Cas’ shoulder, though, something shifts. Through the horror that Cas’ face has become, Sam catches a glimpse of the Cas he knows.

Cas pulls away as though with great effort. He gasps, “Sam, get out.”

Sam hesitates. “Cas...”

Cas throws his blade to the ground, hands reaching to claw at his face. “Sam, please!” he shouts. “I--I can’t--”

Sam has seen this before. He’s _lived_ it, this struggle to keep an impossible force at bay.

He runs.

Sam slams the door behind himself, and a moment later he hears the thunk of Cas throwing himself bodily against it, snarling incoherently. He hears the scrape of Cas’ blade against the metal and he thinks, _fuck_.

It takes a long time before he stills his hands enough to drive.

\--

Sam comes back every day. He stands at the door and he says, hopeful, “Cas?”

It isn’t until the fifth day that he gets back something human, a wrecked-sounding “Sam.”

He opens the door to find Cas curled on the floor, eyes back to their usual blue even though the rest of him is a mess of blood and sweat and dirt. Cas has one hand pressed to his shoulder, and as Sam helps him sit up, he realizes distantly it’s the same wound he gave Cas with his own knife, days before.

“Cas,” he says, “you gotta heal up.”

Cas smiles wryly. He says, “I can’t,” and then he passes out.

\--

Sam carries Cas to the car. He takes him back to the bunker and cleans him up, bandages his shoulder, lays him in bed. He waits.

When Cas finally wakes up, he’s groggy and hurting, but he’s himself. He tries to sit up and winces.

“Woah,” Sam says, rushing forward to help him. “Take it easy.”

Cas looks down as though examining himself. “It’s gone,” he says, on the end of a sigh.

Sam swallows around the lump in his throat. “What’s gone?”

“My grace,” Cas says. “It burnt out the spell and now it’s gone.”

\--

Sam leaves Cas to rest and tries to work out a way to start the conversation they’re going need to have without it being awful for both of them. He’s fairly sure there isn’t one.

When Cas appears at his doorway, he asks the first thing Sam knew he was going to ask. He says, quietly, “Where’s Dean?”

Sam says, “He’s...he’s gone, Cas.”

Cas nods mechanically. He moves to sit next to Sam on his bed. He says, “How did it happen.”

Sam does his best to explain. It feels like making excuses.

Cas doesn’t seem to agree. He says, “Sam. You did the right thing.”

Sam laughs without humor. He doesn’t want Cas to feel obligated to comfort him. He says, “I’m sorry, Cas. I know...I know you…”

Cas says, “We both loved him, Sam.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He realizes, absently, that he’s crying. “Yeah.”

\--

Later that night, Sam works up the courage to ask it, the question he desperately wants to know Cas’ answer to because he doesn’t know his own.

“Where do we go from here?” Sam asks.

Cas examines his hands. He whispers, “I want to live.” He says it like he’s surprised.

\--

There is an agreement they make, an understanding they choose not to leave unspoken, even though they could have.

Cas says, “Are we going to go back to hunting?”

Sam thinks of the last decision he made, and all the ones before.

“No,” he says. “We’ve done enough.” Whether for or to the world, he can’t quite decide. Maybe it’ll all come out in the wash. “We’re done.”

\--

In the quiet that follows, Sam starts the long, slow process of rebuilding his life.

He makes a lot of phone calls. Some of them are promises. A lot are apologies.

There comes a day when he’s gone through his list, where he has no more calls to make, no more graves to visit, no more bridges to mend. He still can’t shake the feeling that he will never be done apologizing. He says as much to Cas, when he asks what’s on Sam’s mind.

“You’ve done all you can,” Cas says, hand on Sam’s shoulder. “It’s enough.”

Sam knows Cas has been making his own amends. After all, sometimes the aftermath of their sins overlapped. They have been helping each other in any way they can. They have been telling each other, all along, the things they haven’t been able to tell themselves.

This time, Sam decides to believe him.

\--

It will be impossible, looking back, for Sam to pinpoint the exact moment when whatever it was they had between them, the hard-won unfailing belief, the solid earnest friendship, the unwavering support and the comfortable, tender intimacy, took a step to the side and became something else.

Sam will remember the feel of Cas brushing his hair from his eyes, of the look of calm, genuine affection on Cas’ face as he leaned in, the quirk of Cas’ head that he understood as a silent question. He remembers his own certainty, the way he had closed the rest of the distance between them in a heartfelt _yes_.

\--

Sometimes, Sam says, “Do you think, if things had gone differently. Do you think we--”

It’s in these moments that some of Cas’ old intensity returns. Where he takes Sam by the shoulders and says, “You are not a consolation prize, Sam. You are worth it all on your own.”

It takes a long time, but eventually Sam stops apologizing for needing the reminders.

After all, sometimes Cas needs them, too.

\--

Sam has heard people refer to others as their better half, as someone who completes them, who makes them whole. They speak of making love, of feeling full, of things clicking into place.

Being with Cas is not like that. Sam suspects he’s always going to have empty places, holes in himself where people he loved have been torn or torn themselves from his life and taken pieces of him with them.

But when Cas lays him down, when Cas asks for permission that Sam is always willing to give,  when Cas touches him with gentle hands and takes him apart with his fingers, Sam feels understood. Like he has burned his life down over and over again and together they have managed to find something worth salvaging in the ashes.

“I want to live,” Cas had said.

Sam answers, again and again, “Me, too.”

 


End file.
